Molly Bloom on Turning Down 5 Million Dollars
The Daily Stoic
Daily Stoic | Backyard Ventures
4.5 • 5.3K Ratings
🗓️ 21 January 2023
⏱️ 72 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Ryan speaks with Molly Bloom about her book Molly's Game: The True Story of the 26-Year-Old Woman Behind the Most Exclusive, High-Stakes Underground Poker Game in the World, the crossroads moment that taught her to overcome challenges through mindfulness, the intoxicating and eye-opening effects of running poker games for the ultra-rich and famous, how hitting rock-bottom taught her that good character is something to be trained, and more.
Molly Bloom is an entrepreneur, author, speaker, and former Olympic class skier. After her competitive skiing career was derailed by injury, Molly became a bartender at the Viper Room in Los Angeles. She eventually started an event and catering company to host high-stakes poker tournaments, which attracted wealthy people, sports figures, and Hollywood celebrities. In 2013, she was sentenced as part of a $100 million money laundering and illegal sports gambling operation and served one year of probation with a $200,000 fine, and 200 hours of community service. Her story was turned into a 2017 film written and directed by Aaron Sorkin. Molly’s speaking and entrepreneurial work focuses on inspiring and educating people on how to become top performers.
✉️ Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail
🏛 Check out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more.
📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, Facebook
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the weekend edition of the Daily Stoic. Each weekday we bring you a meditation |
| 0:09.9 | inspired by the ancient Stoics, something to help you live up to those four Stoic virtues |
| 0:15.2 | of courage, justice, temperance and wisdom. And then here on the weekend we take a deeper |
| 0:21.3 | dive into those same topics. We interview Stoic philosophers, we explore at length how |
| 0:28.7 | these Stoic ideas can be applied to our actual lives and the challenging issues of our time. |
| 0:36.3 | Here on the weekend when you have a little bit more space when things have slowed down, |
| 0:41.6 | be sure to take some time to think, to go for a walk, to sit with your journal and most |
| 0:47.4 | importantly to prepare for what the week ahead may bring. |
| 0:52.8 | Hey, it's Ryan Holiday. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic podcast. I am here. |
| 1:03.4 | Well, I'm not at the painted porch. I'm down in Florida with the family. And I just finished |
| 1:08.8 | today's guest wonderful, fascinating book. I've known Molly Bloom for a while. We connected |
| 1:15.3 | on Instagram. We're actually supposed to do this at the painted porch in person not too |
| 1:21.0 | long ago. We bought a bunch of her books. She was going to sign them and then they also |
| 1:24.9 | rolled out at the bookstore and she couldn't come because she was expecting her first kid. |
| 1:30.8 | So that's why I was late finishing the book. But Molly's game, the true story of the 26 |
| 1:36.8 | year old woman behind the most exclusive high stakes underground poker game in the world. |
| 1:42.7 | Also fascinating and wonderful Aaron Sorkin movie, which I highly recommend. This might |
| 1:48.4 | not seem like it has much to do with stoicism, but actually we go way in depth into integrity |
| 1:54.6 | into being drawn towards the wrong path and how to get back on it, how to find the rhythm, |
| 2:01.4 | your character, your character, come back to virtue as Marx really is right about in |
| 2:05.8 | meditations. We talk about risk. We talk about finding mirror life's task. We talk about |
| 2:13.2 | a whole bunch of fascinating stuff. It's a really awesome conversation. And we're going |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Daily Stoic | Backyard Ventures, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Daily Stoic | Backyard Ventures and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.